My Blogs are about My Motherland India and its awesome people, Some are about ups and downs in life as and when I go through them. So read,enjoy and think about them...

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Kaveri Water dispute: Root Problem Is Linguistic States, Solution Is National Perspective

I admit it clearly that I am no expert or authority in river water sharing between states.But I do study in depth about politics and my analysis of this situation between Karnatka and TamilNadu is going to be scrutinized under that light. My analysis will always have a national perspective as I consider myself as an Indian first and then anything else comes in the picture. So when two states or communities in India fight among themselves then I feel like it’s a fight between my body parts. The problem is not every Indian feels like it so even a small mole becomes a mountain of problems and it takes a little time for becoming a mega disaster.

In majority of situations, consequence of any policy statement or a change follows a peculiar order of interests. First the Individual sees how much benefit its giving to him, then he thinks about his family, then community,then village or town, then district, then state and then finally nation. In any ideal society the thinking pattern of all its citizens should be reverse in order. But like every where else ideal situations always remain ideal and the real or practical situation changes dramatically. In my view how well that reverse ideal order of priority of interests is managed in a country that determines the level of happiness and well being of the nation. When every nation on earth will think like that then they will come together and see the perspective from universal point of view so until that happens I should just focus on keeping my home in order. My home is every nanometer of India and I will see and analyze things from that point of view.

Sometimes it comes in my mind that it might have been a big mistake when our leaders decided to create Indian states on linguistic basis. I think our leaders like many other decisions got this too on wrong side. The states should have been created with mix population so that any political leader of the state would have to depend upon the support of all citizens irrespective of caste, community and religion. At least that would have helped in reducing fight over resources of two states to remain a legal tussle than to become a fight between two linguistic groups like you are seeing now in Kannada and Tamil people. Non linguistic states would have helped in reducing so many problems like creation of regional and caste or community based political parties who just promote their narrow selfish interests and don’t care much about the national interests.

These regional and caste based parties mobilize innocent citizens and fill their mind with all the poison. This situation is there to be seen by all of us and prevails everywhere in India. The recent North Indian vs Marathi manoos problem by Raj Thackrey, to problems in North East India, to fight between Haryana, Punjab and Delhi for waters of Yamuna, to fight between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for waters of Kaveri and many other water disputes arise for the same reasons. All these disputes although over resources become a fight between one community with other and takes a ugly turn. This breeds resentment and make a ordinary innocent citizen a hate mongering soldier of a certain bogus narrow self interest. Creation of linguistic state is another blunder in long list of blunders done by Jawaharlal Nehru. I already discussed his major blunders in separate blog as this blog is for discussion of something else.

The positive point for creation of linguistic states was to give voice to all communities so that they don’t feel alienated and know they have a voice in country’s affairs. But just look around and see for yourself that on contrary, this is affecting the country’s growth and working for strengthening of regional identities, which is harmful from national perspective. It might have been done for keeping noble cause of giving voice to the people in mind but as its clear now that thinking wasn’t that foreseeing and we are in a mess.

I think it wont be possible to change the situation related to linguistic states as it requires a complete overhaul and revolution of a kind. We have to find a different way for solving this problem but that way will only work when we keep country’s interest on the top of our list. This is election time in Karnataka and present Tamil Nadu government too doesn’t have to show anything remarkable to its people. As we have seen many times people in power always make use of emotive issues at this time. So you will see much crying on Ram Setu and Kaveri waters. These types of issues take ordinary citizen’s mind away from actual performance of the government and make them vote on stupid non issues. Ordinary citizens realize that thing much later and by that time everything gets over. Those who should have been judged on the performance get judged on emotions. People may say it was the same case with Narendra Modi, but he never compromised on national interests and gave Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan their due in Sardar Sarovar Project. Modi no doubt won his first election on emotive issue but he won second one on his performance and honesty. That’s why he has millions of admirers around India.

Well those who are reading might be wondering now where the solution of Kaveri water dispute is. Why I am talking about all the issue and not dealing with this directly. I just wanted to give you a background so that you all can understand my solution as it involves scarifies for the national cause. This dispute can only be solved when people of those two states realize that its their own family member on other side who is using that water for quenching his thirst or using it in farms. I know this is too idealistic but this is the only way to solve this kind of problems for the longer run. To solve all these kinds of problems all the rivers in India should be nationalized and an neutral committee comprising of experts in water resource, major political leaders of the states in dispute and central political authority should be formed. The decision of that committee should become binding to all the parties involved in dispute. Again this solution involves individual honesty and national perspective and in my view both of these are lacking in India today. The only way out of these types of situations is the realization by all Indians about their responsibility as citizens. It all comes down to awakening of Indians in the end. I hope and pray to god that awakening should come earlier than my optimistic hope dies. The root cause for the problem of sharing of water and other resources is linguistic states but their solution lies in larger national perspective. River Kaveri like any mother is treating her all children equal with its flow but its her children who are not treating each other equal and right. I hope that better sense prevails.. May almighty direct our intellect in right direction.